I was born. When I was 23 I started telling jokes. Then I started going on television and doing films. That’s still what I am doing. The end.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

It is easier to stay out than get out.

I like to use the hard times in the past to motivate me today.

I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

When I was on TV in the ’80s, I wasn’t thinking, ‚There’s a 10-year-old kid watching this and in 15 years, he’s gonna be doing stuff that was influenced by me.‘ I was trying to get my five minutes together. So now that those people are comedians and they’re influenced by me – it’s bizarre.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

I look just like the girls next door… if you happen to live next door to an amusement park.

Having other comedians complimenting my work is the biggest accolade that I can get.

I used to rush home to see ‚Match Of The Day.‘ Whatever I was doing, I wouldn’t miss it.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?

Take my wife… Please!

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably ‚Doctor Who.‘ What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won’t tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, ‚Well, you know: It’s secret.‘

Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

When I got into this, I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me, I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

If I had never ventured beyond being a stand-up comic, then I would be sitting in my house today working on my Leonardo DiCaprio impression.

Comedy Central was a great network, but ‚Chappelle’s Show‘ took it to a completely different level. Other shows got bigger because so many viewers were watching the ‚Chappelle‘ reruns. For BET, the ‚Real Husbands of Hollywood‘ has that same potential.

Stand-up is hard.

I know I’m more on television, and I’m more recognisable than maybe even the players because they run and train, but I just stand there, and my face does all these funny things that everyone can see all the time.

A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set, and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match.

The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

Talent grips us. We are overtaken by the beauty of Michelangelo’s sculpture, riveted by Mariah Carey’s angelic voice, doubled over in laughter by the comedy of Robin Williams, and captivated by the on screen performances of Denzel Washington.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It’s commenting or observing or twisting life.

I’ll say things that are serious and put them in a joke form so people can enjoy them. We laugh to keep from crying.

The greatest thing about being a comedian is knowing other comedians. And you get to talk to them. Its the most fun.

I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.

Only one in four jokes ever works, and I still can’t predict what people will laugh at.

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It’s literary suicide.

I had a great time being a salesman because of the pitches that I gave when I was selling shoes. However, I don’t think I’m as well versed in shoes as I am in comedy. Being a salesman was all about being a people person, and I enjoy being around people. I also love talking to people – which is why I think I did so well.

I absolutely want to have a career where you make’em laugh and make’em cry. It’s all theater.

Overcoming my dad telling me that I could never amount to anything is what has made me the megalomaniac that you see today.

I try to be funny and not ignorant.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

I don’t watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched ‚The King’s Speech‘ on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don’t think the press has understood me.

I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us.

I now have two different audiences. There’s the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.

On TV the people can see it. On radio you’ve got to create it.

I hate the past – especially my own past.

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

I wanted to be a writer-performer like the Pythons. In fact, I wanted to be John Cleese, and it took me some time to realise that the job was, in fact, taken.

You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.

I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn’t educate America if they started at 6:30.

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

I learned from the guys before me – Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, just to name a few. These are guys that let it all hang out. What they lived is what they took to the stage.

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.

There used to be an old bad joke. I hope it’s not so much a good joke anymore. ‚Everybody’s from Scranton; no one’s in Scranton.‘

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‚Look, here’s what happened.‘

I’ve got a great sense of humor, and if I’m able to say or do something in a movie that people feel like they want to repeat, that’s hugely flattering.